The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

In 1940, the best pilots also needed experience, and the Spaniards like
Dolfo Galland and Hajo Herrmann had bucketloads of that. Inexperienced
Belgian pilots did not have a chance against someone like Dolfo. Yet
although these few could offer advice to those of lesser experience in the
Luftwaffe, the fact was that the vast majority of German pilots flying over
the western front had little if any combat flying time at all. Siegfried Bethke
was very aware of the lack of gunnery practice he had had during his
training and since joining JG 2. ‘Young pilots have not had practice with air
targets during training,’ he noted, ‘only with targets on the ground.’ He
keenly felt that he should have been shooting down more enemy aircraft in
the encounters he had had during the first days of the campaign. Yet no
matter how much training an individual might have done, real combat was a
very different kettle of fish. Experience – hard combat experience – was
unquestionably the best training of all.
One of those discovering this for himself was Leutnant Günther Rall, a
pilot in the 8th Staffel of III/JG 52. The first week of the campaign had been
quiet. III/JG 52 was part of Luftflotte 3 supporting Army Group A, but
since the army had now broken through along the Meuse, the air force had
begun going forward too. First, the group had moved closer to the German
border, but now, on Saturday, 18 May, the 8th Staffel’s ten serviceable 109s
had been ordered to fly to a new airfield at Trier-Euren and then to
rendezvous with a reconnaissance aircraft in the Nancy area and escort it
home.
Günther, a 22-year-old from Stuttgart, had first joined the army four
years earlier, but while at military college in Dresden had moved across to
the Luftwaffe instead. ‘I had a friend who was at the Air Force officers’
school,’ says Günther. ‘We met every Saturday and he told me about his
flying. That was more my thing, so I made an application for a change and I
was accepted.’ That had been in July 1938, and from the outset, he had been
determined to be a fighter, rather than a bomber, pilot. Fortunately for him,
he proved so good at aerobatics during his A/B training that having been
awarded his military pilot’s certificate and badge, and with 190 hours’
flying on thirteen different types of aircraft, he was posted to the
Werneuchen Fighter Pilots’ School in Brandenburg a year later.
Taught by Spanish Civil War veterans, Günther completed his fighter
training flying the new Messerschmitt 109D, or ‘Dora’ as it was known.
Although he had flown a number of different types, he was unprepared – as